OK, I have started the Mueller Report. It begins by setting forth the Special Counsel's mandate -- to investigate links between the Trump Campaign and Russia, incidental matters and "any other matters within the scope of 28 CFR, Section 600.4(a)," the obstruction statute. There were also specific individuals the Special Counsel was authorized to investigate -- Paul Manafort, Carter Page, George Papadopoulos and also two other individuals, names blacked out, who the Special Counsel presumably did not find anything on. It goes on to say that the investigation involved 19 lawyers (14 from the Department of Justice and five borrowed from the private sector), three paralegals and nine administrative staff, together with 40 part-time associates including FBI agents, intelligence analysts, forensic accountants, and others. The investigation issued some 2800 grand jury subpoenas, 500 warrants, 230 communications orders, 50 pen registers, 13 requests for foreign governments, and 500 witness interviews, including almost 80 before a grand jury.
This is significant, not just because of the scope of the investigation, but as showing how much information comes from a grand jury, since William Barr has declined to release grand jury information. (In fairness to Barr, not much appears to be redacted on those grounds). Besides referring unrelated criminal matters to other federal counsel, the Special Counsel also referred counter intelligence matters to the FBI. Only criminal matters are included in the report. This is significant because the standard of proof in a criminal matter is much higher than in counterintelligence, and because admissibility standards are much broader in counterintelligence than in criminal.
Next comes a section on the Troll Farm, which is most disappointing because most of it is blacked out as interfering with an ongoing investigation. That means that we may learn more later. But as of now the final report tells us a lot less about the Troll Farm than the prior indictment did. It does say that neither the Trump Campaign nor any other US person was criminally implicated in the Troll Farm.* It does say that members of the Trump campaign and some supporters, as well as some left-wing groups like Black Lives Matter were duped by the trolls. It also gives some inconsistent pictures of the scale of the operation. For instance, the trolls appear to have purchased a mere 5,600 Facebook ads, for just $100,000. But they made tens of thousands of posts and acquired hundreds of thousands of followers. And they reached at least 29 million and up to 126 million people. Likewise, Twitter identified only 3,814 accounts, but by Russian botnets, but with 175,993 tweets reaching some 1.4 million people. Still not that many out of a population of 300 million.
Many of the things the trolls "duped" people into doing were entirely appropriate things they would have done anyhow, such as organizing campaign rallies. The Special Counsel has identified "dozens" of such rallies, none attracting more than a few hundred to attend. The trolls provided publicity, money, and organization, but (of course) never participated in person in organizing events, giving various excuses why they could not attend. Perhaps activists organizing political events should develop protocols for investigating organizers and financers who they meet only online to ensure that they are legitimate. Liberal activists have been working on such things for some time in case they meet with someone from James O'Keefe's Project Veritas. Perhaps conservative activists who are honest and patriotic should do the same. But what about right-wing activists who are not honest or patriotic and are quite willing to accept Russian money and publicity? I feel uneasy about making such requirements mandatory.
Finally, the report says that the Trump Campaign linked or retweeted many posts by Russian trolls, all without realizing the origins of the posts. There was absolutely no legal culpability involved. What the Special Counsel does not address -- and would probably not be proper to address, but the rest of us cannot so easily avoid -- is whether there was moral culpability. In other words, were the campaign's posts and retweets the sort of innocent errors that anyone might make in the overheated atmosphere that any campaign is, when members are focused on winning and in an elevated state of hostility to their opponents, willing to believe the worst? Or was the Trump campaign re-posting mad conspiracy theories outside the bounds of normal electoral politics?
During the 2008 election, John McCain, confronted with a crowd calling Obama a terrorist, corrected them, saying that he was a normal politician and that the candidates had normal policy disputes. To McCain, a proper leader's job is to tamp down, rather than inflame, the baser passions of the mob. Trump quite famously thrived on inflaming the mob's rage. He promoted conspiracy theories that any normal political leader would have rejected. So we really do need to know what sort of Russian troll posts the Trump Campaign were repeating.
Or, put differently, what does it mean to say that the Trump campaign were innocently duped into repeating Russian troll posts? Were they so innocently deceived that it is unfair even to refer to them as dupes? Or were they culpably negligent in what they fell for?
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*There does appear to be one US person who pleaded guilty to assisting in identity theft and setting up fraudulent accounts, though with no idea his activities involved either Russia or the Trump Campaign.
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